"The Post has the same picture except they went with "PSYCHO' as their headline," Angie said.

I remembered how, months ago, my friends had warned me that Rebecca was psycho and how I'd refused to believe them. I was going to ask Angie to hand me the copy of the News so I could read the article, but I decided against it.

"Hopefully it'll all die down by tomorrow," I said, but I knew it wouldn't. This was the type of story that grew and grew. The tabloids would have a field day with it.

"I still can't believe you came in at all today," Angie said. "You should go on vacation to Mexico or someplace. Just lie on the beach for a couple weeks and veg."

"Maybe we could go together."

Angie seemed surprised for a couple of moments, not sure how to react, and then she played along. "Okay, where do you want to go? Puerto Vallarta? Cancun?"

"How about Cozumel?"

"Cool, let's do it," she said. "How long do you want to stay?"

"How about a week?"

"A week it is," she said. "I better go bikini shopping. I better go on a diet too, if I want to fit into it."

"You kidding? You look perfect just the way you are." There was awkward silence, and then I added, "Well, better get back to work."

"Me too," Angie said. "Hey, you up for going to lunch later? Or maybe we could order in?"

"Jeff and I talked about doing lunch today," I said.

"Ooh, an editorial lunch," Angie said jokingly.

I smiled. I could tell she was waiting for me to suggest another time to go to lunch or to do something else, but I didn't say anything.

"Anyway," she said. "Maybe we could do something tomorrow?"

"Yeah, tomorrow," I said, leaving it vague.

Angie left and I tried to lose myself in my work again, but people kept stopping by, interrupting me, to offer their condolences about Rebecca.

I thanked everyone graciously, although I really wanted to be left alone.

After Kevin and Amy from Payroll came in together to offer their support, Jeff stopped by.

"I heard what happened," he said. "I'm really sorry."

"Thanks," I said.

"You know, you could've taken some time off, just to rest or»

"I wanted to get back into the swing of things," I said.

"You sure? Because if you want someone to cover your stories for you, that's no problem. And we don't have to discuss your new editorial duties until later in the week."

"Aren't we having lunch today?"

"I thought you'd want to take a rain check on that."

"No, I really want to go," I said.

"Okay," he said. "I didn't cancel the reservation yet, so I guess I'll come by to pick you up around noon?"

"Sounds great," I said.

As the morning went on the flow of people stopping by my office dwindled, but I kept getting interrupted by phone calls. The media had found out that I worked for Manhattan Business, and reporters from all over the country were harassing me, trying to get me to comment about Rebecca. After I hung up on reporters from the Miami Herald, the L.A.

Daily News, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Hartford Current, I turned on my voice mail. I wrote a rough version of the entire Prime Net article, in which I described the company's twenty-seven-year-old CEO as "a young Lee Iacocca" and concluded that the company's stock price it was currently trading at about two bucks a share on the Nasdaq was a bargain at current levels. When I checked my voice mail there were about a dozen new messages from newspapers and radio stations around the country. There was also a message from Aunt Helen. She said she'd read about me in the newspaper and was very concerned that she couldn't reach me at home. She told me to please call her as soon as I got her message.

I was deleting all the messages when Jeff came into my office and said,

"Ready?"

I didn't see how it could possibly be noon already, but it was.

"Let's do it," I said.

Jeff and I went to a steakhouse on Forty-ninth Street. The maitre'd seated us at a table upstairs, and a waiter automatically arrived with a mixed drink and a plate of fried calamari. The waiter asked me what I wanted to drink, and before I could answer Jeff said, "Another Manhattan."

Several minutes later, my drink arrived; then Jeff lifted his it was already half-gone and said, "To better days."

"To better days," I said.

We drank. The alcohol was relaxing me, and, for a while, I managed to forget all of my problems. It helped that Jeff was avoiding talking about Rebecca. He went on about his daughter Gretchen, who was the star of her high school soccer team and had just had a small role in her school's production of Our Town. I told him about how my sister, Barbara, had played Emily in Our Town in our high school production. As he went on, telling me about his daughter, I remembered how Barbara had looked so pretty and confident onstage and how proud I'd been that she was my sister.

"I was so proud of you," I said.

"What?" Jeff said.

"What?" I said.

"You said you're proud of me. Why are you proud of me?"

"Oh, not you, I… I mean I was just thinking, Our Town's a really great play, isn't it?"

Jeff was looking at me in a confused yet concerned way when the waiter arrived at the table. Jeff ordered another round of drinks, and then the waiter asked me for my lunch order. I said I'd have the Caesar salad with grilled chicken. The waiter didn't bother to ask Jeff for his order; when the waiter was gone, Jeff told me he'd be having the sirloin.

Jeff started telling me all about his country club near his house in Upper Westchester, and I was zoning out, thinking about Barbara onstage again. I stared at Jeff's mouth and concentrated on the words he was saying, but I kept seeing Barbara in the outfit she wore during the play's third act a white blouse tucked into a knee-length navy skirt.

Jeff invited me to come play golf with him sometime. I warned him that I was an awful golfer, and he said that was fine with him; he loved playing with bad golfers because it made him feel better about his own game. I smiled, remembering how, at the end of the play, I ocn Barbara had smiled at me in the front row while the audience applauded.

We ordered another round. I was feeling pleasantly buzzed, but the alcohol was having a noticeably opposite effect on Jeff. As he told me about my new duties at the magazine in addition to editing I'd have the authority to assign stories to the reporters I noticed that he was starting to slur. Then, as he went on about how the magazine needed to start covering more provocative local stories to differentiate itself from the national competition, he started cursing and speaking in a louder voice. I declined a fourth drink, but as Jeff had his he suddenly started telling me a joke about a priest who had sex with a gorilla. He said the punch line in a booming voice, and two women at a nearby table who seemed to be having a business lunch kept glaring in our direction.

When Jeff stopped laughing, he said, "I got another one for you a guy goes into a proctologist s office," and I suddenly started feeling nauseous. I was hoping it was just indigestion, but then the discomfort started moving higher, from my stomach toward my throat, and I knew I was about to get sick.

"Excuse me," I managed to say as Jeff was still telling the joke.

Keeling over, holding my stomach, I headed toward the bathroom. I was feeling even sicker, and I didn't think I'd make it to the toilet. I thought about solid things wood, cement, bricks and I reached the bowl just as I was starting to yak. After a few minutes I thought I was through, but the sour taste lingering in my mouth reminded me of the last time I threw up in Charlotte's bathroom and I threw up again.

I was sweating badly, and then my knees buckled as I started to stand and I had to grab onto the toilet paper roll to steady myself. Finally I made it to my feet and over to the sink. I stared at the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and my mouth was sagging open. Splashing a few handfuls of cold water against my face didn't make me look or feel any better. I gargled a few times, and then I left the bathroom and headed back toward my table.